


Public Faces

by ravendiana



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/M, Gen, Multi, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravendiana/pseuds/ravendiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper Potts goes to WiSE a conference to recruit talent for SI.  Bruce asks her to make a special effort to bring back the event's Key note speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Ross.   Before Pepper has more than a few chances to speak to Betty, She goes missing.  Pepper uses the resources to hand to try to save Betty, without letting Bruce or Tony know what is going on.  The rescue doesn't go quite as planned, and Betty finds herself needing to adjust to a life she never planned.  </p>
<p>Set Post IM3, Pre Thor2.  I interpret the line "Got Pepper fixed up" to mean stabilized Extermis.  I further assume that Tony could only take the arc reactor out by giving himself Extremis, which would of course to the technopathy varitey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Putting your Face On

**Author's Note:**

> Though out this story there is an ongoing game of "spot the cameo." Essentially I didn't make up a single named character. This story is completely MCU, but every character in it was pulled, in one way or another from the comics. There is no real significance to the non MCU canon characters, I just needed people and thought it would be fun.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper prepares to leave for a week long conference. Bruce asks the to take a message. Tony is just here to quip.

Pepper zipped up her suitcase and looked at her assembled luggage. The conference was less than a week long, and the three bags held casual and business clothes for every day, as well as three different formal outfits, shoes to match each outfit, pajamas, and toiletries. It didn’t look like that impressive a pile, and she hoped this time no one could get it at an angle that would let them make mocking headlines for weeks.

“Packing light, huh?” 

Pepper turned to scowl at Tony’s comment as he sauntered into the bedroom, pinning him in place with the look. 

“I do NOT need that from you before I even leave. The only reason you don’t pack as much is because you just get new clothes from wherever you are and leave them there behind you.”

Tony held up his hands. “That is entirely true, and I was not being sarcastic for once. I thought it looked like fairly light packing.” He turned to look behind him. “Bruce, come in here so you can shield me from Pepper’s undoubtedly deserv’ed wrath.”

“You can’t just use the threat of my… situation to hide from the consequences of everything you say, you know.” Bruce chided as he followed Tony into the room. “What did you say, by the way?” 

At the same time, Pepper was asking “‘Undoubtedly deserv’ed wrath’? Are you marathoning Game of Thrones or practicing for when Thor gets back?”

Tony walked backwards, pointing at Bruce, “I am not hiding behind the threat of the Other Guy, I’m hiding behind Bruce who, unlike me, is a kind and decent human being who does not deserve yelling in his direction.” He spun to point at Pepper, responding, “Both” and then spun again and resumed walking towards Pepper while pointing at Bruce. “I commented that Pep didn’t have much luggage for a week. I’m not sure why this was a problem, but I AM sure I will be enlightened on that soon.” 

He finished talking as he reached Pepper. He took advantage of the fact that he was barefoot while she was in heels to give her a puppy dog look from under his lashes. “Why was that the wrong thing to say?”

Pepper couldn’t hold back a laugh and shook her head, kissing him on the cheek. “You are damn lucky you’re cute, you know.” She blew out a sigh, running her hand through her hair. “It was the wrong thing to say because I was just dreading another ‘Clotheshorse in Chief’ headline. Back when I was your assistant, they didn’t care what I did, and after the third year or so they even got tired of wondering if we were sleeping together. Now that we actually are, I wish that was all they bothered to talk about.” 

Bruce wrinkled his forehead. “They wrote headlines about your luggage?”

“That is the price of life at the top. They write headlines about everything that doesn’t matter and almost nothing that does,” Tony interjected. “But they won’t this time, I’m sure. You’ve been going to these things how long? And you tell me every year how there is no media at all. While that’s a prime example of never writing about the things that do matter, it also means you should have a peaceful week.” He stopped moving and talking for a moment, “But you should still take your emergency outfit and earphone.” He headed towards her closet.

“It should be a quiet week,” she agreed, “and, therefore, I am unlikely to need flame retardant clothing and communications. Unless you have been calling out terrorists on international TV again.”

“Yeah, no, lesson learned on that one. Still, it’s better to be safe.” He opened her smallest case and put the bundle in. Staying bent over it, he said very softly, “We know that better than most.”

Pepper leaned into Tony a bit. Given their lives, it was easier not to fight on this one. It wasn’t like a week was that long apart for them, and she wasn’t going to be that far away. If she hadn’t flatly forbidden him from coming near the conference, (once was more than enough on that disaster) it would have been trivial for him to come and see her. Especially if he used the new, externally powered suit she “didn’t know” he was making. But she would still miss him. She was a bit surprised at how much she would also miss Bruce. The only other Avenger to take up full-time residence in the tower so far had quietly become a larger part of her life than she had realized. That bore thinking about while she was away.

“I hope it’s a quiet week here too. I don’t care if you did give yourself a healing factor, Tony, you had surgery less than a month ago. I don’t want you getting up to anything,” she searched for an appropriate word, “energetic.” 

“That’s not what you said last night.” Tony quipped and then jumped as she poked him with a fingertip heated enough to make a point, without actually burning anything. In response, all the fire suppression spigots in the room angled towards Pepper. 

“And before one or the other of you makes a mess, or carries this conversation in -” Bruce blushes, “- ehem, other directions, I do need a moment to talk to Pepper before you leave.” He gave his usual apologetic half smile and rubbed the back of his neck, “If you don’t mind.”

The fire suppression system returned to its normal position while Pepper turned her focus to Bruce. “I was hoping you would take a message for me. The keynote speaker, Dr. Ross, she and I, we have a lot of history, and I haven’t really handled it very well.” He said, and Pepper crossed to a set of chairs by the window, gesturing that he should follow. This sounded like it might take a while. Tony and Bruce both followed, Bruce taking the other chair and Tony perching on the arm of hers.

“Betty, Dr. Ross, is brilliant. We worked together for years. She’s like the other half of my brain. Really I should have known Fury was lying about what he wanted when he brought me in, because she knows Gamma at least as well as I do. Even better on the bio side. I told myself that was why he wanted me, that it wasn’t biological, or that he was trying to avoid the General.” 

“So the name isn’t just a coincidence.” Tony broke in. “I’ve had the pleasure of pissing off that particular piece of brass. Also, now that you mention it, weren’t most of your papers co-written with a Dr. E. Ross? 

“Co-written is probably generous... to me. The work was pretty much 50/50, but she is a much better writer than I am.” 

“I haven’t seen her publish anything in the last few years.”

“Unfortunately, I think the reason she hasn’t published is that her work ran away from her. In that about half of our data at this point is... me. She had the other half, until we gave it to Dr. Sterns, just before the... incident... in Harlem. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Pepper.” He ran his fingers along his shirt cuffs. “I’ve treated her very badly, and it’s not something I can completely make up for. I know she’s forgiven me for putting her in a coma during the accident, but, I ran off, I didn’t tell her that I was alive, that I was okay, I started working with someone else, and again I didn’t tell her until I needed something from her. I barged in and disrupted her life just when she was putting it back together again, and then I disappeared on her again. And now,” he shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, “it’s been almost a year. I’m here, I’m safe, and I’m only just now letting her know. And possibly screwing up her life all over again.”

Pepper nodded. “And you want me to talk to her for you. What exactly do you want me to tell her?”

“That I’m sorry. That I know I’ve screwed up. That any data she wants, she just has to ask you for, and I’ll get it to her, whether she ever wants to speak to me again or not.” Bruce said in a rush. “Thank you, Pepper. I didn’t want to just send an email, but I also didn’t want to intrude on her life again.”

“I’ll tell her. That’s all I can promise, Bruce.” She leaned forward and took his hand in both of hers. “I can also tell you that you are a good man, worthy of love, no matter what happens here.”

Bruce gave her a watery smile, but didn’t meet her eyes directly.

“Also, try to hire her. If Bruce says she’s as smart as he is, we need her.” Tony broke the moment . Pepper sent a sidelong glare in his direction.

“You do remember that isn’t your call to make anymore, right?”

“Head of R&D! I get to request outstanding talent! Besides, if she’s the bio side, she might be just who we need for finding safe application for the ‘new project’” He protested, then turned his attention to Bruce.

“So you and your old research partner, hunh? You never told me that doing science together was your version of foreplay.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I should have been getting permission from Pep all along!”

Rather than laugh it off as Pepper had expected, Bruce colored again and looked aside. “I would never…” He trailed off and looked up at Pepper, and in that moment, he was entirely too adorable. 

“I am about to leave for a week. That is NOT a conversation we are having now. Tony, no teasing Bruce while I’m gone.” Tony opened his mouth and Pepper cut him off. “I mean it, especially not since he is waiting to hear from Dr. Ross. Now,” she grabbed one of her cases and looked at the other two pointedly. “Both of you walk me down to the car. Tony, you can tell Bruce about literally buying the General's favorite bar out from under him.”


	2. Betty - Showing your Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty fights with her nerves to return to public life after working mostly in hiding since the events of Incredible Hulk.

Betty blanched as she looked out the cab window. The entrance to the conference building was crawling with people holding cameras and microphones. Some of them were talking to various women, but most of them seemed to be looking for someone. Betty prayed it wasn’t her. She knew her work was important, and was glad Time had done that story on her, and even that they had somehow found a picture. It left her feeling torn. She wanted the work to get attention; she just wished that attention wouldn’t include her, personally. She was glad she’d worn a hat, and she pulled it low over her eyes as she made a dash for the entrance. 

The hat did its job; she made it to the registration area and, after looking around, took it off. She walked up to the desk where the harried staffer looked up at her. “Do you have your... Oh! Dr. Ross!” She stood up, holding out her hand. “I’m Monica. Let me take you to the Director.” 

“Thanks.” Betty took the offered hand and shook it. “Are there usually so many reporters here?” 

Monica shook her head, the beads in her braids clacking. “It’s a new one on me. I guess you’re pretty popular these days. That, or it’s the recruiting team.” Betty was about to ask what she meant when a limo pulled up outside the conference center windows. A towering red head in a sleek white suit was practically mobbed by the reporters as soon as she exited the car. “Speak of the devil,” Monica said.

“Is it normal for multi-national CEO’s to show up here to do recruiting themselves?” Betty asked, turning away from the commotion before she got herself noticed.

“Not as a rule. Ms. Potts has been doing recruiting for SI for a long time, though, and she just kept doing it when she became CEO. I heard that one year before she worked for him, Stark showed up to do his own recruiting and left with six R&D people and twenty-six lawsuits,” Monica confided in a low tone. Betty laughed. Given the man’s reputation, she could believe it. Then she shook her head. Things associated with Stark, and New York, were the last things she needed to be thinking about at this point. She needed to get through her talk and focus on getting her career, and her life, back.

Being featured in Time had helped get her feet back under her. That had gotten her the invitation as keynote speaker here, but it would have been a lot better if she hadn’t been featured as one of ‘the most important people no one had ever heard of.’ Academia is vicious, and you don’t get many second chances. With the military no longer an option, she couldn’t blow this one. And she was certainly not going to trade on personal connections to get a position that wasn’t justified. The General had taught her, all too well, the cost of that.

While she was lost in thought, Monica led her to a small conference room clearly set up as a base of operations. She directed her over to a small, dark-skinned woman who was engrossed in a tablet in one corner. “Dr. Ryan? Dr. Ross has arrived.”  
“What? Oh thank you, Monica. Dr. Ross, it’s a pleasure to meet you in person. I’m sorry it’s such a mad house. We’ve never had press here before, and I’m sorry to say we have absolutely no process for dealing with them.” She put down her tablet and stood, holding out her hand.

“I understand. I hope at least some of them are respectable journalists, who will give the other speakers here the attention their work deserves.” Betty shook it.

“Ms. Potts is also here; she’s talking to the press,” Monica interjected.

“I had best go rescue her then,” Dr. Ryan said. “Heather! Your charge is here.” She beckoned over a young woman who barely looked out of grad school. Next to the other two women, she looked almost sickly pale under her shock of pitch black hair. “Dr. Ross, this is Ms. O’Gara. She will be your aid for the week. Anything you need, just ask her. I’m sorry to rush off on you; we are all looking forward to your talk tonight, as well as your presentations.” With a harried smile, she rushed off for the front doors, Monica at her heels. 

“People come and go so quickly here,” Betty quipped. “So Ms. O’Gara, are you going to show me the yellow brick road?”

“I'm more like your personal flying monkey,” the young woman replied in a deadpan voice. “But please call me Heather. Ms. O’Gara leaves me sounding old, which is weird since it’s still Ms. instead of Dr. because I’m stuck doing another year of research on my Ph.D.” She led the way out of the crowded room and towards the elevators.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Problems with your work?”

“Not the work so much. Two years ago, my advisor had a bad accident in the lab, and I had to get reassigned. Slowed everything down.”

“That’s terrible. I know all too well about lab accidents. They can derail a whole career. I hope your adviser is getting better.”

Heather nodded. “They can derail things, but some of our greatest discoveries were accidents, after all. It certainly gave him some new ideas to work with.” She gave Betty a sidelong look. “I hope that he will be fully recovered very soon. Sorry to unload on you.” She turned to Betty with a tight forced smile. “This is your room; here’s your key. You don’t need to do anything until your speech, which is directly after dinner. There will be a reception after that, with the high school and undergrad scholarship girls. I’ll get out of your hair so you can get ready. My number is in your packet if you need anything.” The words came out in a suddenly high speed jumble as she placed a plastic card and a manilla envelope in Betty’s hands and then turned down the hall.

Betty watched her go for a moment. “At least she wasn’t throwing apples,” she muttered to herself and unlocked her door. There was both a sitting room and a bedroom in the small suite, and she went into the latter to drop her oversized military duffel on the bed. She followed it down and stared at the wall. “You can do this,” She told herself again and got out her tablet to review her speech. 

She had lost track of time when a knock on her door startled her from her attempt at memorizing as much as possible of her speech. She was surprised to see that she didn’t have long left before her alarm was set to go off to start getting ready. She headed to the door, wondering if there were last minute changes, and if so, why they weren’t just calling. “Who is it?” she called through the door.

“Room service.” Betty blinked. She hadn’t ordered anything. It was possible Heather had sent something up, but why would she bother since the banquet would be in less than two hours? She checked the peephole and saw a young man with a camera pointed at the door. She blinked at the door. “You have to the count of 3 before I call security. One. Two.” She heard the sound of feet running down the hall. “I guess that answers whether it was just Potts they wanted.” 

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Betty hardly remembered a word of her speech the second it was over. She had talked about the tension between doing whatever it took to get the work done and the need to be seen doing it. Not for glory or for fame, but so that the next group of girls with ideas that could change the world, would. She centered on the idea that their work needed to be seen, so that there would no longer be women changing the world in silent anonymity. Being seen was power, responsibility, and accountability all together.

Her speech had prompted what seemed like a great deal of sincere applause. She was just starting to breathe again when a woman stood up in the back of the room. 

“What about when the work goes wrong, Dr. Ross? What about when it ruins lives, families, and neighborhoods? What about your responsibility then?” Her challenge echoed in the suddenly silent room. Betty stood stock still for a moment. She had known this would be coming. From the first time she saw Bruce’s name in print linked to Hulk after the Battle of New York she knew that her own part in his creation would come out. They had worked too closely together, published together for too long, for people not to figure it out. She took a deep breath and raised her head.

“Yes. Especially when things go wrong. I made the mistake of allowing myself to be bound by law not to speak directly about the situation we all know about. The kind of agreements you should never sign. The point of speaking up as much as we can is to try to help other people not make the same mistakes. Ms…?” She looked at the woman who had challenged her. “Endo.” 

“Ms. Endo, and everyone here, when I talk about the need for accountability and responsibility it is because, now more than ever, science is amazing, world changing, and fundamentally not safe. If we are doing it right, we are pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. Sometimes we are pushing the boundaries of humanity. On the other side of those boundaries are, by definition, things we are not prepared for.”

“We have to make a choice. To be prepared to break those boundaries, and deal with what we find, or to give up, and turn back.” Her father’s face and his adamant determination filled her mind. “We must be mindful, however, that where we turn back, others won’t. Humanity has been rushing headlong to our own limits, and we will either transcend those limits, or we will destroy ourselves. It is the people pushing the limits who will decided which it will be. And when the time comes, it won’t matter all that much if the world knows who we are, but they will. Thank you.” 

She stepped away from the podium and headed back to her seat. She didn’t realize how badly she was shaking until she sat down again. Dr. Ryan made a few more closing remarks that she didn’t hear, and then it was time to move again, as they all adjourned to the reception hall. She was following the crowd in a daze when Heather caught up to her. 

“That was amazing, Dr. Ross! I was so impressed by your early work and, well, I’m sorry I was short with you earlier. When you took that sudden sabbatical from Culver, I was afraid you’d abandoned everything you’d done. I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear what you said tonight!” She was grinning so broadly that Betty couldn’t help but smile back. 

“I’m glad to hear that it made someone happy,” she answered.

“You mean Endo? I don’t really know her, but I’ll bet your answer was a good one for her too. You aren’t going to abandon your work, and I think that’s what’s important.”

“After what happened in Harlem, I’m sure some people think the work should stay abandoned. I don’t want to make make soldiers, but my work was taken to make soldiers once before, how can i make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

“After what happened in Manhattan, a lot of people are rethinking their positions on that.” A new voice broke into their conversation. “I know I will always be grateful that Bruce was there, and that the Other Guy is a good catcher.” Ms. Potts had come up behind them while they were talking. “If he hadn’t been there, we probably would have lost the island, and maybe more. I certainly would have lost Tony. I owe you my eternal thanks for that.” Her voice was low and earnest as she held out her hand.

Betty took the offered hand, and Pepper put her other hand over their clasped ones. “Thank you,” she said again. Betty shook her head. “You should be thanking Bruce. He was the one there.”

“I do,” she said. “Almost daily for a while there, but according to him, I also have you to thank.” Betty blinked at the other woman, but before she could think of how to respond, they were suddenly confronted with a small hoard of shouting people.

“Dr. Ross! Are you willing to officially talk about the Hulk Project?”  
“Ms. Potts, is Stark Industries getting involved in Super Soldiers again?”  
“What does Captain America think about your efforts to recreate the serum?”  
“Is Dr. Ross’ work in any way related to the events of last Christmas?”  
“Ms. Ross, what is your relationship to Dr. Banner at this point?”

Betty stared at the wall of people, Heather hiding behind the two older women. Pepper stepped up to the chaos, seeming perfectly cool and pleasant. “As Dr. Ross stated earlier, the answers to most of your questions are currently classified. Stark Industries’ only interest in biomedical research at this time is therapeutic. I cannot speak for the Captain, and he is currently on assignment elsewhere. While all the Avengers are welcome in the Tower at any time, most of them have their own homes elsewhere. That is all for now, ladies and gentlemen.” With that, she took Betty’s arm and steered her into the reception hall, Heather trailing in their wake and another large, red-haired woman stepping up to make sure only conference attendees followed them.

“At least a couple of those questions were about our work this time,” Pepper said. “Though that last petty vulture is going to have a hard time finding work anywhere but the rags he’s at now, with that attitude.” She turned to Betty. “We both have jobs to do in here, and later, maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to talk to you as CEO of Stark Industries.” Betty found herself still being steered by the hand on her arm, while Ms. Potts subtly shooed Heather out of earshot. 

“Right now I need to talk to you as Bruce’s friend. He wanted me to let you know how sorry he was for disappearing on you again and taking all the data he represented away from you. He also wanted to apologize for not letting you know where he was as soon as he was safe. For what it’s worth, he didn’t move into the Tower right away. And once he did, there was still a lot of confusion about how safe S.H.I.E.L.D. could keep him from the military. There wasn’t much agreement as to how far we trusted them.” 

“Regardless, he wants you to know that any data he has is yours for the asking. Bruce… is very good at beating himself up. He certainly hasn’t behaved as well as he should, but.… I know something about having your body turned into something you can’t control, even a weapon against yourself. Tony and I both do, and I think Bruce is finally ready to come back to the world.” Pepper squeezed her arm and then let go. “I’m sorry to dump all of this on you right now. I wasn’t sure when I would get a chance to talk to you again. Meet me for lunch tomorrow?”

Then she was gone. Betty hardly remembered what she said to any of the young women she spoke to that night. She mostly remembered smiles, so she must not have made too much of a fool out of herself. It was impossible to concentrate on anything except what Pepper had said. And what she hadn’t said, but which seemed very strongly implied. For one mad moment she desperately wanted to talk to Leonard. “I didn’t need a boyfriend, I needed a psychiatrist.”

She was just reaching a point where her work could be her own, where it wouldn’t be overshadowed by the person she was working with. The work she’d done in the last year, no one could claim wasn’t hers. No one could dismiss her as if she were just an assistant. 

But she knew it wasn’t as good alone. It wasn’t as good without another mind, canted just far enough away from hers that the thoughts they passed back and forth took on shapes neither of them could have seen alone. Bruce had never tried to take all the glory for himself either. He had always been scrupulous about pointing out when people attributed her work to him.

She loved him. She missed him. She trusted him with her life, and even in his enraged state, he had never tried to hurt her. But she wasn’t sure she could trust him to stay. Running seemed to always be his first response. Then there were Tony and Pepper. People he had apparently trusted enough to live with for months before even telling her he was in the country. Stark had publicly invited all of the Avengers to move into his tower, but how far did that invitation extend? Did many of the others come with additional people? Or were the worst of the papers right and the invitation to move in had been not just to his tower, but to, well, move in? Pepper had seemed to know Bruce and looked tender when she talked about him. 

On top of all of that, while Bruce might be basically indestructible now, she wasn’t, and neither were his new friends. The alien invasion had been bad enough on television. She didn’t have any desire to see it up close or to have her home address given out to terrorists. She wanted to teach, and do her work, and live in her house, and have a normal life. But her work wasn’t normal. She had brought something new into the world, and it might be that she had been running away from that, in her own way, as much as Bruce had. She had told all the others that they couldn’t be afraid of their work if they wanted to control it. She had chosen the tamer side of her work, but what was the spectrum like when the edges of the world were filling back up with Gods and monsters.

Eventually, her thoughts still chasing their own tails, she slept.


	3. Pepper - Saving face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper tries to convince Betty that she is needed at SI. She might have over shared just a bit too. But when an attempt to dodge over eager reporters leads to Betty disappearing, Pepper takes charge of finding her.

In a private room off the side of the hotel restaurant, Pepper waited for Betty. Cabe, Happy’s choice to replace him as a bodyguard, waited outside to show Betty in. It wasn’t common knowledge that the CEO needed a guard even less than Tony these days, and besides, Natasha approved of Cabe as a replacement sparring partner when she was on S.H.I.E.L.D. missions. 

Pepper wished she had time to take things more slowly, but she would rather move too fast than miss her chance. Bruce’s guilt might be lessened if he realized that in the last year and a half, Betty had been almost as good at hiding as he was. Still, her reaction today would determine if Pepper made an offer from SI. Despite her goading, Pepper agreed that Betty would be invaluable on the project to figure out why Extremis could be stabilized in some people and not others. She could be trusted not to be tempted to weaponize it or take it to the military. 

Tony wasn’t a biologist. If he hadn’t seen Maya’s work ten years ago and had her notes to work from, he never could have stabilized any version of Extremis in time to save her. She still wasn’t sure how much of a risk he’d taken on the version he’d given himself. Just because it was less likely to blow up didn’t mean it was safe for someone with Tony’s intellect to make changes to the way his mind worked. They needed someone with a more biological background. If Bruce said Betty was a better biologist than he was, Betty was who they needed. He trusted her on a bone-deep level, so they could trust her too. 

SI paid well and looked after their people. That encouraged loyalty, but after Obadiah, she and Tony both had corporate trust issues. For some people, there simply was no such thing as “enough.” She and Tony had once fit that description, though they now knew they needed to be better than that. Kidnapping and torture could apparently do wonders for one’s moral compass; still, she didn’t recommend it.

Her thoughts were broken by Betty’s arrival. The dark-haired woman looked at Pepper with a small half smile that was unexpectedly familiar. It takes time for couples to develop the same facial expressions. And even longer for them to have them deeply enough ingrained to last almost five years apart. Pepper gestured for her to sit. “I know it’s lunch, but I’ve been informed that omelets are the only appropriate food for serious discussions, and they do them very well here.”

Betty smiled. “Omelets is is, then,” she agreed. Pepper was struck by how soft her voice was in normal conversation. Her voice had carried well in the hall last night, and she must have practice with that in lecture halls, but it didn’t carry over into her regular speech. She looked worn as well, like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep. That wasn’t surprising. The previous day could not have been easy on a number of levels. None of which would have made for an easy night either.

“I ambushed you last night, so let’s start today off with your turn. What do you want to know?” Pepper offered.  
“Well, that’s open-ended. There are a lot of things I could ask. Why you? Why here?”

Pepper nodded. “For the last year and a half or more, you’ve been almost as hard to find as Bruce. Your publications have been on theory, with very little lab work. It makes you hard to pin down, and even more, it makes it clear you don’t want to be tracked down. But you agreed to speak here. Since I always come to recruit for SI, it seemed like the perfect time to catch you.” 

“The answer to ‘why me’ is that Bruce wasn’t sure you would want to see him. He didn’t want to stir up any more painful feelings than necessary. If your response is something in the neighborhood of ‘go to hell,’ it will probably be easier on everyone for you to tell that to me than to his face. I can also act as a go between if you want data but not contact. I’m really the best choice. Cap and the spies are busy, and Tony is, well, Tony. Easy only applies to him in very limited contexts.”

Betty lifted the lid on her waiting plate and turned her attention to her omelet. Pepper did likewise to give her room to think. She had been up for several hours setting up meetings. Her metabolism might not be as overactive as it had been before she was stabilized, but she could still give Steve a run for his money in the food department. Betty looked up when the waiter brought Pepper her second omelet.

“There were some long term complications from the Mandarin issue. One of them is an extremely high metabolism. Get abducted by a megalomaniacal bioengineer, have all the cake you want for the rest of your life.” Pepper smiled a saccharine smile that dripped irony. 

Betty ducked her head. “How do you do it? How do you live when things like that are part of your life?” 

Pepper shook her head. “I almost couldn’t. There were so many times I was ready to quit, ready to walk away from everything. I was done with bullet holes, armor, explosions, mad men, aliens, nukes, and more mad men. I was especially done with the suicidal plans that seem to be the only kind Tony knows how to make. At first I thought I was doing it for Tony. I felt so responsible for him.” 

“But then I realized, it wasn’t just about him. I was right there at the top with him, all those years. I never once objected to our weapons contracts. I made sure they got filled. I kept him functional and focused on building the next thing that blew up, just as long as it never blew up anywhere near me. With the exception of Thor, whom none of us have seen since that day, I think if there is one sentiment that drives the people being held up as heroes, it it this - ‘I owe a debt’.”

“All my life, my father tried to convince me I owed a debt to this country just for being alive. He wanted me to be a soldier rather than a scientist, trained me for it. He sees science as a means rather than an end, and he was determined that I would too. As soon as I was old enough to get away from him, I was determined to forget every bit of it. If I owe a debt to anyone, it’s to Bruce. I guess I also have a share in everything he thinks of as his debts. I helped make him what he is. I think if it weren’t for me, my father would have treated him better, wouldn’t have labeled him a monster.” She sat and stared for a bit. “He thinks of himself as both Victor and the Monster, but I’m as much Victor as he is.”

“Bruce isn’t the only one out there with an issue either. I’m not talking about Blonsky. Did you ever read any of the work by Maya Hansen?” Pepper asked.

“Of course. Our work was coming from different directions, but I think everyone in the serum field is familiar with each other's work. It’s not that big a field. Maya, Bruce and I, a Canadian outfit, and the Russians are rebuilding their program. There are some people working underground too, but they obviously don’t publish.”

“Well when all of the currently terrestrial Avengers are at the tower, we have carriers of three of the current four, plus the original. Even the ones that are stable, we don’t really understand how they work. Tony only managed to stabilize Maya’s work by computerizing it.” She saw the spark in Betty’s eyes and held up a hand. “Do not ask me how that works or what he did, I didn't understand one word in 15 of the explanation. The point is that we want to understand them. Tony has read your work and thinks you are one of the few people with a shot at figuring it out. So that’s the offer. You get unlimited support, and a reasonable amount of blood samples. You help us figure out how all these blocks work, and whether or not they fit together.”

“This offer is not contingent on working with Bruce. You can have your own lab. Our second tower will be up soon and you can work and live there if you like. That is in addition to a generous salary and a majority share in all patents you file while working with us, and a minor share in any patents we file derived from your work.”

Betty’s eyes had gone wide. “That’s… That’s extremely generous.” 

“It’s actually the standard deal we give department heads, with the exception of the residence being actually with us. The military, all the militaries, are all over this kind of work. The pool of experienced, capable people we can trust not to sell out to them is basically you and Bruce. He says you are better. We need you, we aren’t going to pretend we don’t.” Pepper folded her hands over the table. She had practically offered the moon. Now she would find out if it had been enough.

Betty watched her again, weighing things in her mind. “May I ask another question?”

“Of course.”

“What exactly is going on in the tower that causes the most worthless part of the press to lose their collective minds on a regular basis?”

Pepper laughed. That was the last question she was expecting. Still life in the Tower was trending towards complicated, and it would be best if Betty were forewarned “Considerably less than they like to think, more than most people would guess, and not nearly as much as Tony wants to arrange. If you choose to work with us and Tony suggests anything inappropriate, let me know and I’ll deal with him. I imagine you and Bruce can settle things between yourselves though you might dash Tony’s hopes. If Natasha suggests anything inappropriate, she will let me know. At least that was more or less how things stood when I left.” Pepper watched Betty’s face closely during her revelation. She didn’t want to scare the woman, but she also knew it was important to be honest about what she might be getting herself into.

She smiled at the interesting color Betty’s face was turning. “Most of us have someone, but life threatening situations do bring people close.”

“Are you frequently in life threatening situations?” 

“I co-ordinate.” Pepper grinned, but then her expression soured. “Rumors are the last thing we want though. We spend far too much time trying to stay away from the paparazzi. Bruce is the only one who lives in the Tower full time. Even with the Malibu place gone, Tony and I have houses in several different places, and we have to travel frequently. Cap has joined up with S.H.I.E.L.D. full time, along with Clint and Natasha. They are all away frequently, as well as each having an apartment of their own elsewhere in the city. Still it seems like there are photographers everywhere. At least they usually aren’t pushy like that little twerp last night.”

“He wasn’t even the worst. Before the dinner some kid tried posing as room service to get me to open the door. I scared him off.” 

“Next time try to keep him there and lying while you call security.” Pepper advised. 

“That’s another thing I don’t know how you can live with,” Betty admitted. 

“This one, I don’t either,” Pepper agreed. “At home, I think Tony is creating gooey ink arrows for Clint.”

The door opened and Heather slipped in under Cabe’s arm. Voices and flashes followed her in until they were cut off by the slamming door. 

“It’s insane out there! I don’t know what they are all so interested in!” She leaned with the back to the door and looked around the private dining room. Her face fell. “There isn’t a back door out of here,” she said flatly. “You have a panel in 5 minutes,” she told Betty.

“That is the one drawback of this room,” Pepper agreed. She put her hand to her ear and flicked her blutooth to a private network channel. “Cabe what is the ETA on security?”

“Four minutes.”

“That isn’t soon enough.” She turned to Betty. “I’m sorry. I thought I checked your schedule to be sure we would have time.”

“Maybe something was changed, Dr. Ryan just sent me to find her,” Heather said. “I know a back passage not far from here. It will let us go through to the main hallway, but it’s still at least 20 feet from the door.”

“Cabe can give you that much space,” Pepper said. “ I can sit tight here for another 10 minutes while security clean these guys out, again. Betty, let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.” 

“I will,” Betty promised. Pepper leaned forward impulsively and gave her a hug before she was out the door.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Pepper spent the next night and and morning talking to various potential recruits, most of them of extremely high quality. She was in the middle of an interview when Cabe’s voice came through her earpiece. 

“Dr. Ryan is at the door, Ma’am. She wants to know if you have seen Dr. Ross today.”

Pepper frowned. “Excuse me Ms. Pryde.” She went to the door. “Is something wrong, Dr. Ryan?”

“Dr. Ross missed her lecture. I haven’t seen her at all today. Do you have any idea where she might be?” 

“I haven’t seen her since Heather came to get her for that panel that was moved yesterday.”

“What panel?” Dr. Ryan looked completely bewildered and Pepper felt a chill go up her spine. 

“We were having lunch yesterday and just before one Ms. O’Gara rushed in, telling us you had sent her to fetch Dr. Ross for a panel she was about to be late for. The place was crawling with reporters and they took a back way out. Has anyone seen her since then?”

Dr. Ryan’s face lost a degree of its color. “Not that I know of,” she admitted. “I will get everyone to ask.” 

“Right,” Pepper said, turning to the young woman across from her. “Katherine, it looks like this interview is about to become a practical exercise. I want you to find out everything you can get out of the net on Heather O’Gara. Get me something I can use, and you have a job.” 

Fear gripped her even as she set about calling Happy and arranging for him, and every available SI security guard in a 250 mile radius as well as equipment for all of them to be here ASAP. She tried to call Natasha, but only got to Sitwell, who told her that Black Widow and Cap were both on assignment. Hawkeye was on medical suspension, again. Sitwell did at least inform the local authorities and instructed them to rout anything they found through him. She stopped him from mobilizing his own team. Tony would be alerted much more quickly by a S.H.I.E.L.D. team headed to her location than my internal SI resources getting shuffled. She didn’t think letting Bruce know what was going on would be very helpful, and she REALLY didn’t want to replace the tower’s interiors again. Tony would either not be able to keep it behind his teeth or he would be flying down to help. 

She needed someone who was good at knowing what they weren’t suppose to know. Katherine’s resume had her listed as more of a programmer than a security expert. She thought about the interviews she had had, but she had been focused on hardware and biological sciences this trip. Then she remembered the girl who knew that Betty had worked on the Gamma project. Not exactly a secret, but also not what had been in the local papers.

A quick registration search led her to Suzi Endo. A quick mobilization of gophers led to Suzi Endo in the makeshift command center she had assembled. 

“Ms. Endo, Thank you for coming.”

“Not everyday a girl my age gets a summons from one of the most powerful women in the world.”

“The other night, when you challenged Dr. Ross, how did you come by that information?” That question earned her a more wary look.

“Here and there, not hard to put together now that Dr. Banner’s name is public, and they published a lot of work in that field together.” 

Pepper nodded. “Did Dr. Ross answer you satisfactorily?”

“She seemed sincere. Look, this is getting weird. Anyone can see something is up. You either suspect I am involved in something, or you think I can help. Which is it?”

Despite her fear, Pepper smiled. “I’m hoping you can help. I think Dr. Ross has been abducted. Most likely by someone interested in her work, but…”

“Definitely by someone interested in her work,” Katherine interrupted. “Heather O’Gara’s former graduate advisor was Dr. Samuel Sterns. Dr.s Ross and Banner met with him just before the incident in Harlem two years ago. He disappeared that same night. She didn’t register for the conference until after Dr. Ross was announced. Ms. Endo may want to double check this last bit, but it also looks like the volunteer schedule was tampered with to assign her to Dr. Ross.” The young woman beamed at the end of her recitation.

“Excellent,” Pepper said. She handed Katherine a special business card. “SI, Coney Island, Monday morning. Welcome aboard Ms. Pryde.” She turned back to the other woman. “Ms. Endo, given that information, we are looking for a large location, within at most a fifty mile radius of the hotel but probably closer. It will be out of the way so it won’t draw attention, but not completely isolated. It will either have reason to be stocked with a large amount of bio medical equipment, or it will have received a number of large and heavy deliveries in the last 3 months. Most likely it will have received a number of smaller deliveries in the last few weeks.”

“Right, on it,” Suzi answered. “Also, did you know you were smoking?”

Pepper looked down at where the waist of her skirt was beginning to char. “Right, time for me to go change. let me know as soon as you have something.” Then there was nothing she could do but wait, and steam.


	4. Betty - Faces in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty finds herself held by someone who was once an ally. Exposure to Bruce's blood hasn't been good for Samuel Stern's sanity. Exposure to Samuel Sterns isn't going to be good for Betty!

Betty blinked groggily awake. Her head ached fiercely and her vision swam. She blinked to clear her head, but it didn’t seem to help. “Dr. Ross,” a vaguely familiar voice said to her right and she turned her head. The sight that greeted her made her sure she was hallucinating. A man with a familiar face was sitting restlessly by her bed. Most of his body was normal sized, but his skin was same distinct green of the Hulk,and his head was hugely distorted. His cranium was easily two and possibly three times the size it should be. 

“Dr. Sterns? Is that you?” She tried to put a hand to her head but couldn’t move. “What happened? I’m disoriented, and I’m not sure I trust my vision.”

“Ahh yes, well, I’m sorry to bring you here in this manner, but there are people I need to be careful of you know. If the only distortion you see is my alteration, then you are seeing just fine. On the other hand it’s not impossible you are experiencing other effects. It seems to take everyone a bit differently. So many variables so far! Too many. We need controlled conditions. All our data is so jumbled. Formulas, vectors, individual DNA, radiation levels, we have no controls! I’m so glad you are here Dr. Ross! We have so much work!”

Betty blinked at him. Each part of his rambling made a kind of sense, but taken altogether it was a jumble. He had left his chair and was pacing around the small room that she saw was made up of cubical walls surrounding the cot she lay on and the chair Sterns had just vacated. 

“This is so exciting! We lack controls but the variation is almost infinite. But! Some things work the same. So far. I think. The suppressor we made. It works. And in low doses it. It doesn’t suppress, It MODERATES! But. But but but always a damn but. It’s not stable. Resistance! Resistance builds up too fast.” He shot around the room like a pinball as he talked, increasing her sense of vertigo even though she was laying down. She couldn’t move any of her limbs. She couldn’t tell if they were tied down or simply not responding.

“Why can’t I move? What’s happened to me? What’s happened to you?” She was fighting for calm but his manic diatribe was distressing her almost as much as her body’s unwillingness to co-operate. 

“Oh not to fear. You are fine, better than fine, you are amazing. And you will stay amazing, and you will fix my problem, and your problem and then we can fix all the problems together! I can see it all so clearly when it stands still! It doesn’t though, it keeps running and I am fast, now, oh so very fast, I can almost catch it. So you will help me right?” He continued to karoom around as he babbled.

“I don’t understand. What happened to you?”

“Why you happened to me! Your brilliance went into Banner’s blood and drip drip dripped into my head! I should have known! I wasn’t getting anywhere because I only had half the data! But you! You fixed it. You fixed it all on paper. And now you can slow the thoughts down enough that I can think, and then I can plan! But we must be quick! Only so long for you to be perfect. You have to fix yourself. first.”

“Fix myself?” Betty was beginning to be able to pick the sense out of his words. She wished she couldn’t. Sterns was moving around the cot she lay on. He was removing straps but even as she heard them fall, she could not move or feel her freed limbs. 

“Oh don’t mind that, just a touch of curare. Well a touch for you. Had to guess a bit. No baseline data you see. Anyway antidote is in you already. You should get feeling back quick enough. I should make a note of how long! Notes. Need to document everything! Did you know I’m almost certain it’s psycho-reactive? Like the original. Makes you more of what you are. Not sure what that says about your friend! Not sure at all. Minimal connection. Fracture maybe. stabilizers may not work there. So sad! But that was the problem, don’t you see? Flawed specimen. No good as a baseline. Outlier. But how can you tell the original is an outlier?”

Betty concentrated on ignoring the monologue. Sterns had clearly driven himself mad. If Bruce’s blood had gotten into his system that would explain his color. The cranial expansion she had no explanation for; except that it was the point of origin, and if it has soaked in through a cut, it could not have been a very large volume. Bruce had been injected with the original serum as evenly as they could manage, and then irradiated to activate it completely evenly. It made sense for his transformation to be uniform. Likewise if the entire exposure was at a single point, that area might experience the majority of the reaction, leaving a distorted result.

While she was thinking Betty was continually trying to move. Slowly she began to get responses from her fingertips and toes. Those first hopeful responses were followed by a wash of pain and the pin prick sensation of returning sensation swept over her entire body at once. Suddenly everything, even the intense effort to stay still felt like movement, and movement was pain. She tried to grit her teeth, and her jaw erupted in fire. Pain overroad every thought. She tried to move away from the pain, which caused every muscle that moved to cramp into its tightest position. Her vision was wash of red and the only sound in the world was an unending scream.

********************************************************************************************************************************************* 

Betty came back to awareness huddled in a real corner, against concrete walls. She was surrounded by a circle of destruction. The cubicle walls were knocked to the ground and shredded. Sterns was crouched in front of her like a gargoyle. She almost shrieked but her throat was raw from screaming. Her limbs still felt strangely heavy, a deep ache lingered in every muscle, and she just felt wrong. As if the body she was in didn’t match the map her mind had of herself.

“Ahhh, you are back!” Sterns crowed in her face. “So sorry! Bit too much. Curare or Physostigmine. Not sure which. Will need to try more later. Baseline data. Did make a bit of a mess though! Well, not a problem, didn’t break anything important. Time to get to Work!” He bounced up in excitement and tried to pull her after him. She didn’t budge. She looked out at the arm he held in his green hands. It was red. Not “I’ve been in the sun too long and I’m Irish” red; not even “that water was a lot hotter than I expected” red. Her arm was a bight, true, candy apple, fire hydrant, organic tomato red. 

Her gaze followed the arm, noting a level of muscle definition that she hadn’t had since she was 16 and still in JROTC. the loose sleeve of her black cotton dress was molded to her arm. She looked down at her chest. The new muscles were there as well, layered on top of a skeletal frame that had also increased in every dimension, judging by how tight her once loose dress was stretched. Once she thought about it, she could tell her bra had snapped under the strain of her new ribcage. Her loose elastic belt was digging into her waist.

A large part of her mind was gibbering in terror, but it was, for lack of a better term, a perfectly reasonable terror. Terror was a completely appropriate response to the situation she was in. It was not, however, a response she could afford. She forced the gibbering part to as small a part of her mind as she could and then turned the rest on her situation. Gibbering terror and rising rage aside, she felt mostly like herself. She wasn’t sure if she would feel completely normal without the powerful emotions she was suppressing, but she did not feel like a gallon of acid had been poured in her brain, nor did she feel any need to rant at hyper velocity.

Some of Sterns monologue made more sense now. Stabilizers. He had given her the original formula they had used on Bruce. They had given him the instructions in their data that night. Then he had irradiated her, but judging by her current size with a lower dose than Bruce had gotten. She had no idea if the colors had any significance at all. Maybe they were a genetic marker, or gender dysmorphia, or even a result of the lens used. There was no way to tell at this point. Stern’s refrain of “not enough data” crossed her mind. She was stable for now, but the stabilizers he had made from Bruce’s blood had only a limited effect. 

She had been working on the same problem since they had failed. She had been trying to find a way to make the serum and radiation's impact less extreme. Sterns had been working on the same thing, with the same data, but his thought processes were already being altered and an ever increasing rate. She stared at him. “I see why you needed me. But why all this? Why did you abduct me and do this to me? You could have just ASKED!” She screamed the last word in his face, surging to her feet, at least a foot taller than she had been.

“So you won’t cheat.” Betty looked up and saw Heather O’Gara walking towards her. “This way, you need this to work as much as he does, and you will be using it on yourself first. No way to sneak in poison and call it the cure.”

“Says the woman who stuck me with a poison dart?”

“You got better. Well from the poison anyway. If you get this right you will be better all around. Bigger, stronger, faster, able to heal, and in complete control of yourself.”

“And bright red!”

“Minor detail. You can either find out if all your on paper work holds up in the field, of you can get ready for the mega trip that will last the rest of your life. Your call.” 

A choice like that was no choice, just as they had planned. Betty worked. Heather watched over Sterns. They had been right that most of the work was already done. It was mostly just a matter of taking her precise calculations, and testing them in practical application. The vast majority held up. Those that failed could be tweaked in a matter of hours. Science is a slow and exacting process, but this wasn’t a fresh puzzle. This was the culmination of nearly a decade of work. In barely more than a day, she had her first batch.

She thought about just taking it and running. As far as she knew it was only Sterns and O’Gara. Heather hadn’t shown any particular abilities so far. Sterns had abducted her, willfully experimented on her, and coerced her to his will. Anything she owed him for her part in his condition had been paid back in spades. He was also insane. It was hard to tell how far he was aware of his actions. He was dangerously unstable. She almost laughed out loud at the metal pun, and knew that her own control was wavering. He had been trying to help them when he was sane. Surely that man was less of a danger than the one she faced now. He would understand that the work needed to carefully controlled. He would see that it could not be used as a weapon.

She called the others over and took the first dose in front of them, as they insisted. She waited for a reaction but didn’t feel much different. Her near hysteria had more to do with her situation than her condition. She offered the next dose to Sterns. After injecting himself he seemed to seize, and stood completely rigid. Heather ran to him and glared at Betty. She was intensely glad that they had seen for themselves that the doses had come from the same vial. He remained like that for well over a minute before his body began to relax. 

He opened his eyes and smoothly turned to Betty. His stance was easy and his voice, if anything was lower and smoother than when she’d met. “Thank you. You’ve given me back my mind, and so much more than my mind. We will be able to cure so many diseases with this. This, and with the money your father gives me for it.” He smiled triumphantly at Betty. Her vision went red.


	5. Pepper - Face off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper finds Betty, but what was supposed to be a rescue, doesn't quite go the way it was planned.

Pepper scanned the industrial compound Suzi had located from the front seat of an SI tactical vehicle. Happy was in the back coordinating the security teams they had managed to assemble. The entire entourage looked like a military convoy and Pepper was going to have to do another review of the company with Tony later, because this had been far too easy to put together. They clearly were still too much of a military company. They pulled to a stop just inside the gates and people swarmed out.

"Okay, perimeter team spread out. Do not lose sight of your flankers at any time. Radio in if you do." Happy's voice was calm giving the orders despite his earlier misgivings. "Search team, we are gonna have to do this as quickly as possible. I wish we had more of you but we don't. Look for equipment on the sweep. We’re not the military or police. I don't want to see the live ammo sidearm leave its holster until you are actually under fire. We know for a fact the tranks you have can slow down the Hulk, so they will take down anything you might run into." He looked over the security teams for a moment, then decided he'd said everything he needed to say. "Move out."

The perimeter team strung themselves out along the indies of the fence, while Happy started to head back to the command van. Pepper headed to join the searchers, and heard him turn behind her. "Aren't you coming?" She turned to look at him. "You've got command covered, Hap. I'm going in. If Betty is in there, she will want to see someone she knows."

"The boss'll kill me if I let anything happen to you."

"I'm the boss now, Happy, and if I thought there was anything in there that could hurt ME, I would not be sending our people into it. Why do you think I wore my party clothes?" She gestured to the flame retardant outfit. "We don't even know if Bruce could hurt me anymore -- I'm the last person you need to worry about. You know I'm not interested in joining the hero club. This is strictly a rescue." She gave him a quick reassuring hug. "Now go on and let us know what we are doing."

She left to join the rest of the rescue squad. The warehouses were mostly empty, eerie and echoing caverns that they were able to search quickly. They were covering all of the regular ones first before the one that had been marked as containing “unknown modifications”. While that was the most likely location, it was also the most likely to contain complications, and Happy had insisted that they clear all the other locations and lock them behind them first. They were heading to the last line when they heard the roar.

Pepper’s head whipped around at the sound. She had heard Hulk’s roar in person, and had heard Blonsky’s on recordings. This was recognizably similar, but also clearly wasn’t either of those; it was slightly less bone shakingly deep. There were very few ways to put together Betty’s capture with the arrival of a new Gamma altered individual, and Pepper didn’t like any of them. And despite Tony having tested these tranks with Bruce, she wasn’t actually ready to entrust the gurads to them in the field. After all, they had only slowed him down, not stopped him. She turned to the team leader. “Give me your trank gun, then pull everyone back to the perimeter. Happy, if something big and angry comes your way put a trace on it and then call home. We may need back up, but not until they get past me.” She cut the line before he could argue, or she could change her mind.

Durability, strength, and the ability to be on fire at will were what most people noticed about extremis. What they usually didn’t consider was that those added up to the ability to run as fast as she could think, and jumping just short of Bruce. She barely stopped in time to open the door rather than running through it. It wouldn’t have stopped her, but it wouldn’t have been worth it either. She looked around the first non-empty warehouse they had found. It was stacked with shipping containers, and she might have been looking forever if the roar hadn’t come again, impossibly loud in the echoing confines of the metal structure. This time she didn’t bother looking for a door. Hoping there wasn’t anything explosive on the other side, she allowed the burning within her to take hold and ran at the metal wall, melting it on her way through. 

There wasn’t anything explosive on the other side. There also wasn’t anything that made sense. A man, hulk green but roughly normal sized, except for a grotesquely distended cranium was hanging clutched in the gasp of a Hulk sized red woman. Her other enormous fist was pulled back to pummel the large target made by the green man’s head. Clearly not for the first time, but with the way his neck was lolling awkwardly already, very likely for the last. The red Hulk turned towards Pepper with a low rumbling growl. She shook the man she held and pulled him to her, hunching over him like a cat over a half dead mouse, glaring at Pepper to warn the interloper away from her prize. 

There is a trick to seeing the face of the person behind the Hulk’s transformation. After seeing it on film several times, and once in person, Pepper was able to see Bruce’s face in Hulk’s, but she wasn’t sure she would have recognized this face without the tatters of Betty’s dress as a clue. The simple black dress she had been wearing the last time Pepper had seen her had split at the seams. If the belt hadn’t been insanely stretchy, and held the fabric close to her body on her front and back, Betty probably would have gotten tangled up in it and ripped it to shreds. As it was, it ended up looking like something from a more primitive time, an impression that was matched by the predatory look on her face.

“Betty?” Pepper couldn’t suppress the question in her voice. “It’s okay now, Betty. We are here for you now; we can all go home.” She tried to keep her voice low and steady. She took a slow step forward and held out her hand. “Come with me, Betty. We can go home. We can figure out what to do with him…” She moved towards the limp man, and that was the wrong move. Betty roared, and pulled the limp figure to her chest with a sharp jerk that sent his head lolling about. The gamma effect on him must have included some extra durability, or the weight of his oversized head swinging around wildly would have broken his neck.

Hulk always had very simple priorities, and Pepper had to assume that Betty would be the same. Right now her priority was smashing the man in her grasp to a pulp. It seemed a reasonable guess that he was the one responsible for her abduction and transformation. Pepper could not attack her if she wanted to get through the fog of rage to Betty. She knew all too well how killing someone, even a monster whose death made everyone safer, weighed on the mind, and that was a weight she didn't want Betty to carry if she could help it. So no attacking, but keep her distracted long enough to wear her out, while not giving her time to finish smashing her enemy.

"Okay, Happy if you can hear me, keep everyone back and tell them NOT to fire." She turned to face the other woman. "Let's hope those Aikido moves work with this level of mass disparity." She crouched and ran forward, picking up speed. Just as she hit a point she thought was still outside Betty's reach to leap, a giant fist came at her face, clearly with enough range to hit. She dodged to the side, grabbing the hulk's wrist for a hip roll, but Betty's mass was too much and she hadn't committed enough of it to the swing. She changed tactics and used the arm as a fulcrum to swing herself upwards. Nat would have used that move to get her thighs around Betty's neck and bring her to the ground, but that move, even if it worked, was too aggressive. Instead she swung around her hold and launched herself backwards to land near where she had started, but she definitely had Betty's attention now.

"Pepper! What the hell is going on in there?" Happy's voice came over her earpiece clearly. Tony would be glad to hear the heat resistant materials held up in the field. "Is the Other Guy down there?" Happy was clearly on the edge of panic. "I'm fine, Hap. No, Bruce isn't here. That was Betty. I don't know exactly what happened, but it looks like the guy who abducted her decided to give his captive superpowers. That is going about as well for him as it usually does."  
She danced forward, keeping her opponent's attention on her but pulled back well in advance of the strike. Betty stumbled a few feet in her direction and roared again in frustration. She swung again, and Pepper ducked, moving back toward the wall she had come through.

This was going to be the tricky part. She needed to get Betty out into the open. There were just too many accidents waiting to happen, fighting in an unknown lab environment. While an explosion wouldn’t phase her, and she doubted to would seriously harm a hulk, she just didn't know what the other gamma enhanced person could take. Only Betty's insistence to hang on to him gave any indication he was even alive. His color also wasn't fading the way Bruce's did when Hulk finally passed out. 

Pepper began running in and out of Betty’s reach, scrambling to keep her attention, but not come close enough to be hit, trying to draw her toward to hole in the wall. “Natasha makes this look so easy, and she’s going at normal speed,” Pepper grumbled just before she failed to dodge fast enough. The impact of the massive fist knocked her high into the air. On her way down she was caught in the middle again, punched sideways into the wall, which caved behind her, whiting out her vision for a moment and knocking the air from her body. Without extremis it would have pulverized her. She shook her head and got her eyes working just in time to roll out from under Betty’s stomping foot. She rolled into the hulk’s other leg, bringing her crashing down. When she hit the ground the green man rolled away. 

“Okay, we are out of the lab and the guy is out of her hands, that’s progress, right?” Betty was already reaching for her dropped prize. Pepper threw herself over him and when the hand closed around her instead she let her skin flair to life again. Betty let go with a startled sound. “Don’t grab the woman who’s on fire” Pepper advised. She reached down and grabbed the man’s collar, hoisting him in front of her and taking off running. “Happy, get a vehicle headed my way ready for a hand off.”

She could hear Betty pounding after her, but Pepper guessed that there wasn’t enough vertical room, even in the warehouse, for the ground eating jumps Hulk seemed to be fond of. Either that or Betty hadn’t gotten the hang of them yet. Sadly, Hulk mostly ran on instinct, and there was little reason to think that would be different for anyone else. Pepper made for the door with all the speed she could manage and hit the outside running. There was an open sided jeep heading towards her as fast as it could manage in the close driveways, and she made for it while waving her arm, indicating that they should turn down a left hand side drive. She reached the jeep just as it was turning and rather than lose momentum she leapt, dropping her burden into the open back as she went over. “Go, Go, Go!” She hit the ground in a crouch as the jeep sped away.

She didn’t have long to catch her breath. Betty was barreling after her but stopped at the intersection torn between her original prey, and Pepper who had taken him from her. She huffed in frustration, making abortive movements in each direction, until the jeep turned a corner and was lost to sight. Her decision now made for her, she snapped back to Pepper and rushed her. “Betty, please listen…” she began before she had to concentrate on dodging again. Each dodge just seemed to make Betty madder, her blows coming faster and faster until she landed one that again sent Pepper flying.

“Fine. You aren’t listening.” She rushed the hulk dead on this time, leaping for her head. She hit and kicked off, jumping again for the roof to her right. She had only run a few feet when the roof shuddered beneath her feet as Betty landed behind her. She ran a few more feet before turning again to face her. She crouched and launched herself again, aiming for the shoulder. The impact spun Betty around but not fast or hard enough to let her continue in the straight line she had planned on. Instead she bounced off to the side, losing control of her momentum. She fell in a heap gazing at the sky.

“Oh that’s just great. Hey, look Betty, the news.” She pointed up at the circling helicopters. “How did they even know about this.” She looked over, surprised to realize she hadn’t needed to dodge anything yet. Betty was still red, but she was shrinking down to maybe a foot more than her normal height. She dropped, more falling than sitting, and buried her face in her arms, crossed over her knees. Pepper got up and moved carefully over to her. Betty looked up when her shadow passed over her, and gazed fixedly at the circling craft. 

“Fuck.”


	6. Betty - Facing your Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper takes Betty back to the tower. Betty takes the first steps in dealing with what happened.

Betty let Pepper lead her off the roof of the warehouse and into a waiting jeep. She could hear Pepper on the phone, and got the impression that she was explaining why they would not be returning to the conference, but it felt as if the other woman was far away rather than sitting next to her in a car. It occurred to her, distantly, that she didn’t even know how long she’d been out. Or what she had done once Sterns had said he was giving the formula to the General. She remembered fighting with Pepper, but only in a hazy way. Not quite in the acid trip way Bruce had described, but more the way you remembered the early part of a night that ended in a black out drunk. 

She pressed at the memories and realized that she lost track of Sterns in them at some point. Heather wasn’t really in them at all. Her stomach knotted. Her hands didn't feel wet, but that only means nothing bled on her. She swallowed down the fear in her throat and turned to Pepper. “Sterns and O’Gara, what happened to them?” Her voice was raw and harsh in her ears.

“O’Gara was there?” Pepper asked. “I got Sterns away from you, unconscious but in basically one piece. I never saw O’Gara, or any signs of her, at all.” She leaned forward and put her hand on the shoulder of the large man in the front passenger’s seat. “Happy, call back to the clean up teams, tell them to be on the alert for a young woman with pale skin and short black hair. If they find her, they need to detain her.” She leaned back and turned in her seat to face Betty, looking at her with an intensity she wasn’t ready to face. Betty turned away to look at her hands.

“I know you aren’t ready to deal with anything yet,” Pepper said softly, “and you shouldn’t have to, but there are a couple of things that need to be dealt with now, and you have a right to decide some of what happens next.” Betty let her head fall back on the seat behind her. She listened to the sound of the car driving -- a sound she had heard all her life. It hadn’t changed. The world spun on, just like it had after Bruce’s accident. And just like then, her life didn’t fit anymore in that world. The life she had was gone, again. She felt too tired to think about the future, about how to even conceive of rebuilding her life one more time. 

She took notice of her surroundings again when something warm was pressed into her hands. She looked down to see a Burger King bag. She blinked at it for a moment, and then realized that her shocky state had been covering the fact that she was starving. She looked over at Pepper and saw that she had her own bag in her lap and was more than halfway through her first burger. Another bag sat between them. She fished out the first burger, ate it in three bites, and grabbed for the next one. 

When she and Pepper had both finished their first bag of burgers and were eating fries out of one of the extra bags, she found her mind fixing itself on small, immediate questions. “I’m almost surprised you eat fast food,” she said to the CEO. 

“I’m on the run a lot,” Pepper answered. “Besides, burgers are apparently becoming the traditional meal for surviving a massively body-altering abduction.” She gave Betty a careful look. “I don’t know if mind altering abduction always gets shwarma or if that is reserved for alien invasions. When you are part of something new in the world, it’s a good idea to build yourself some traditions.” 

Betty looked at her still bright red hands. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice about being part of it anymore.” The thought was dull and heavy in her gut. She had run to give herself space. To keep her work from being misused, certainly, but also to give herself time to decide, as the world got weirder, if she was ready to answer the challenge she had posed to the other women at the conference only a few days ago. She had thought she had known, when she wrote her speech, what she would choose. The difference now was that she no longer had that choice.

“To be some part of it?” Pepper waved her hand, “No, you don’t. I’m sorry for that. I think I know pretty well how you feel right now. But how much of a part and what kind is up to you. I think you know that for your own sake, and that of anyone around you, you need to make sure you have control over this. Beyond that, it’s going to be entirely up to you.”

“Control?” Betty snorted. “Control is the last thing I have over this.” She would have gone on, but the car had pulled up to a small private airfield. Pepper, the large man in the front seat, and the red haired woman driving all piled out of the car. Pepper came around to Betty’s side of the car. SHe was about to protest that she hardly needed help when she nearly fell on her face trying to get out. She still didn’t have the hang of moving in a body that just wasn’t the size she expected it to be.

Once they were on the plane Pepper turned to her again. “We are going back to New York for now. You don’t have to stay in the Tower if you don’t want to. We can discuss that as much as you like, but first we have to decide what to do with Dr. Sterns.”

“Do with him? I don’t understand?”

“Stark Industries may have wealth and influence larger than several countries, but we aren’t actually a government and we can’t hold a prisoner on our own. So we need to decide who to turn Sterns over to. Our options are the F.B.I., the Army, or S.H.I.E.L.D. Anyone else we hand him over to will probably just hand him back to one of those. To be honest the F.B.I. is a bit of a crap shoot as well, as far as that goes.”

“Who exactly are S.H.I.E.L.D. anyway?” 

Pepper snorted. “That is a very good question, and one I want an answer to very much. Director Fury told Tony a couple of years ago that Howard had been one of the founders, but the “homeland” in their name has a very modern sound to it. Again, despite “homeland” they appear to be able to act internationally, since they had no qualms about going after Loki in Germany. On the other hand Natasha more or less admitted to me that one reason she recommended Tony stay a ‘consultant’ was to give S.H.I.E.L.D. plausible deniability when they needed someone to get something done without causing an international incident.”

“But you trust them?” Betty’s tone was heavy with incredulity.

“I trust Fury considerably less far than I can throw him. But I trust Natasha to be suspicious of everyone, I trust Clint to be very protective of other agents’ free will at this point, and most of all I trust Steve. They are all on the inside there now. So basically S.H.I.E.L.D. is where we have the best eyes these days. The army isn’t too happy with Tony lately, your father particularly hates him, and we always had closer ties to the Air Force anyway.”

“I can’t promise what Fury would do with Sterns, but I do know that it won’t involve a mass program, it might with the Army,” Pepper seemed to be waiting on her now. Betty thought. She thought through every possibility she could think of. 

“This really would have been easier if I killed him when I was out of my head.”

Pepper closed her eyes. Her pale skin when a bit whiter and she swallowed hard. “Easier, not better,” She opened her eyes. “So far you’ve never killed anyone, not directly. Trust me,” her voice was quiet and a bit thin as she spoke, “you want to keep it that way if you can. No matter how insane they were, or what they did to you, that isn’t a memory you want. I know.”

“And when he tries again?” Betty’s voice is soft as well, “If he comes for me again?” 

Pepper smiled grimly, “You beat him to a pulp, again.”

“And if he comes after someone else?”

“We stop him, we get someone else to stop him, or we get together with people who have decided to get very good at avenging. But if we start thinking it would be better if we killed our enemies, we are back to thinking that better weapons are the way to be safe.”

Betty nodded, but didn’t say anything. She stared out the window at the empty sky and let her mind phase out again for a while. Pepper didn’t push her.

“So do conversations with you usually end in ‘do what Pepper wants’?” Betty finally asked.  
“I’ve had several years experience pointing temperamental geniuses in the best, or at least least damaging, direction. It’s a skill.”

Betty gave her a small smile. “You said there were a couple of things to deal with…”

“Yes. I know you need time and space right now,” Pepper answered as gently as she could, “but there really only is one person who can give you any kind help learning to control this. I understand if you don’t want to see him, but his lessons on control probably saved my life while Tony was figuring out how to stabilize Extremis. I can try to help you, but I’ll want to be able to talk to him.”

“He ran away on me. Then he did it again. Then I ran away on him. We’ve both gotten so very good at running.” Betty looked out the window again. She continued talking, but her tone was distracted. She was talking more to herself than to Pepper. “After New york, when the news started using his real name, and it came out that he was living with you, in New York, I knew he was done running. When I agreed to give the address at this conference, that was me, saying the same thing. I didn’t know you were going to be there, but I wasn’t surprised you were. I knew once he and I stopped running from each other, it wouldn’t be long before we found each other again.”

She turned from the window to face Pepper again. “I think I had made my decision before you even gave me the message. I had to go through all the thoughts again when it was real, but I think I already knew. I love Bruce. I always have, and I probably always will. I was scared of the danger. Scared of going back to a life of waiting for a knock on the door, and someone with a crisp uniform and solemn eyes.”

She held her hands, still that shocking red, up in the space between them. “Now I’m just afraid of fate. I’m afraid of giving in to being each other’s only options. The phase ‘made for eachother’ seems a lot less romantic in context.” Her lips twist in a mockery of a smile. “Maybe I should put white streaks in my hair.”

Pepper shook her head. “Is speaking in ‘reference’ a genius thing? I always thought it was just Tony.” Her expression sobered. “One thing you should definately not think is that you are each other’s only options.” She took Betty’s large hands in her own slim ones. “Bruce has people who love him, whether you want to go down that road or not. And you will also have a place to be, with or without him.” She kissed Betty’s cheek softly. “Make your decisions, knowing you have options. Also, all of the above, is one of those options.” 

Pepper held Betty’s hands a moment longer, then stood and moved her hand to Betty’s shoulder for a moment, before she left Betty alone with her thoughts.

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

Betty blinked herself awake. The last thing she remembered was being on the plane with Pepper and her rising panic at her condition somehow abruptly morphing into exhaustion as the food wore off and the day finally caught up to her. She raised a hand to push back her hair, and it was it’s proper size, and pink. She blinked, hope rising in her that it had all been an insane dream, and the unfamiliar room was just another in the series of unremarkable and unremarked hotel rooms. Her hotels had never had rooms this large or sheets this nice but…

“It did happen, you are safe now, but it did happen.” A vaguely familiar masculine voice said from the doorway to the room. He stepped forward and Betty realized she was sitting up in a bed, looking at Tony Stark in her bedroom. Or more accurately, his bedroom. Well not his bedroom, but one he owned. There was something in his hands. A tray, food, and then the smell hit her, coffee. She made an inarticulate sound and a grabbing gesture. He set the try down on the bed and she latched on to the coffee.

“A woman after my own heart,” He said. “Pepper wanted to be here, but she is wrangling the media, and for a smooth patch up like we need here, she’s the one for the job. But she didn’t want to leave you alone, either.”

Betty looked up at him. “How did you know?” 

“That you were awake? JARVIS was monitoring your vital signs, just to be safe. What you were thinking?” He sat down on the very edge of the bed. “I’d like to tell you that someday you will stop ever waking up and hoping it never happened. It’s been two years, and I still think it must all have been a dream at least once a week. Granted, aliens, gods, and Cap back from the dead don’t exactly count in the ‘more likely to be real’ column.”

She looked at her hands again. Grateful to be back in her normal form, but unsure what that meant for how her condition was or wasn’t successfully stabilized. Her stabilizers. She felt herself start to shake. She tried to wrap her arms around herself but found herself staring again at her hands. Now that the first horror at her own transformation had past, her hands were not a reminder of what had been done to her, but of what she had been forced to do.

“My work,” She moaned, lost in the sick feeling of having everything she had worked for turned against her. She started to sob when she felt arms around her and she blindly turned into the offered shoulder. A hand smoothed her hair as she cried.

“I know, I know,” His voice was a soft steady litany but there was a rawness in it that echoed her feelings. “Your work is who you are. It’s yourself, as much as any part of your body is. I know how it feels. They make you give your mind to them. They take what should be the best thing you can do, and they pervert it. They make it horrible. I know. They take your work; they take yourself.” He kept talking, and petting her hair while she cried herself out. 

Eventually she pulled away, and he let her go. “God, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know you and…”

“It’s okay,” he cut her off. “There aren’t that many of us who have been through something like this, who can really understand. Besides I’ve heard so much about you I feel like I’ve known you for a while.” He gave her a small smile. It bore almost no resemblance to the cocksure smirk he was so well known for. She found herself giving an equally small smile back. She thought she might almost like to get to know this version of Tony Stark. Pepper, though she had only known her a short time, she already counted as a friend. 

She took a deep breath. If she let this change her mind, she was letting it control her, even more than giving in to the possibilities it offered would. She nodded to herself. 

“I want to talk to Bruce.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*******************************************************************************************************************************************  
Stinger

Heather pushed open the door to the shipping container leaving behind the detritus of a week in hiding. She carefully made her way out of the compound At the first grocery store she found she bought a burner phone and the smallest time card it had. Once she was outside she dialed while walking. “Rainia? Tell Dr. Hansen I have it.” She hung up the phone and threw it away. She walked to her pick up point and smiled down at the vial and flash drive in her hand.


	7. Epilogue - I like your face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She-Hulk? That's what they're going with?

“You two will both love this.” Tony announced as he walked into the room, in a tone of voice that told Pepper her reaction would be as far from love as you could get. He tossed a magazine on the coffee table in front of where she and Betty were curled up on the couch. The cover was an aerial photo them fighting on the roof. Pepper’s skin was lava cracked and she was in the air, both feet aimed at Betty’s huge shoulder. The headline read “Super CEO battles Red She-Hulk!” Betty groaned.

“She-Hulk?!? Really? That's what they're going with? That’s the most ridiculous, derivative…” Betty began to rant, turning more red in the face than a simple flush. 

“Why is this coming out now? It’s been months!” Pepper shouted at the same time. “JARVIS, get me legal on the phone.”

Bruce looked at Tony. “Why on Earth did you bring that in here? Do you have no sense of self pres… nevermind, I clearly forgot to whom I was speaking.”

“JARVIS, cancel that call, legal is already aware and they are on it, but what’s out is basically out,” Tony countermanded.

“Who is out?” Natasha asked from the door. “Did somebody finally catch Tony getting handsy with Cap in public?” She raised an eyebrow at Betty’s expanded stature, until leaning over to kiss Pepper gave her a look at the offending headline. “She-Hulk? That’s the best they could come up with?”

“See,” Betty groused as she stood, “that’s what I said. It’s derivative and insulting! I will almost bet money the phrase ‘distaff counterpart’ was used in the article.”

“So why would it be Steve in particular you are worried about Tony getting handsy with?” Bruce asked Natasha, in an attempt to deflect the conversation. Betty could stay in a kind of minor hulk mode where she retained all her mental faculties, almost indefinitely as far as they knew, but her already short temper was often even shorter. Something like this wouldn’t lead to much but yelling, but her enhanced lungs and diaphragm could produce impressive volumes when she got going. 

“Nobody uses the phrase distaff counterpart anymore, because no one knows what a distaff is.” Pepper told Betty while he was talking.

“Because I heard the word ‘out’, and so wasn’t thinking of women, and Steve gets all blushy and flustered if you threaten to embarrass him in public, which is cute. Whereas you just get this awkward hurt look and nobody wants that. But if the media ever got an unambiguous shot of Stark and Cap making out, we would be free of about half of the right wing from collective heart attacks.” Natasha cocked her head after she said that, “Which come to think of it, wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

“I am not participating in premeditated assassination via outrage. Unless it’s already too late. Is that what all the yelling was about? Tony you said there wouldn’t be anybody in that part of the park at that hour!” Steve joined the others, his hands blotched with pigment, clearly having been drawn from his studio by the noise. Betty scowled and handed him the offending paper. His eyebrows rose. “She-Hulk? I thought that sort of wording wasn’t considered appropriate anymore?” Betty. Pepper, and Natasha all nodded. “I don’t suppose we can come up with something that isn’t about our personal lives to distract them with?”

“Don’t know what you are distracting people from,” Clint said as he came into the room from the balcony, hand on his bluetooth, “but turn on the news, I think people are going to be distracted. Thor’s back.” They all turned to the wall that was now displaying muted imagery of a bizarre scene of portals and objects and people popping in and out of existence. Thor’s distinctive armor and red cloak flashing through scenes seemingly at random.

“Can we make it there in time to help?” Steve asked Tony, whose eyes had that glazed look that said he wasn’t dealing with the physical world at the moment.

“No, damn wish I’d looked at this email from Selvig earlier. In fifteen minutes it will be over, one way or another. Even in the suit I’d only get there in time for clean up.” He shook his head as his eye’s cleared. 

“Anyone else,” Bruce's voice was steady, but lower than normal, “feel very much like hitting something just right now?” Everyone else in the room nodded. 

“Right, I think this is a day for the reinforced gym,” Cap moved to herd them in the right direction before something was broken, or burned. He turned to Clint. “Let Fury know we can come in if needed.”

Tony slid in behind him. “And once we’ve gotten the aggression out, we can take advantage of the fact that we are all hot and sweaty.” He waggled his eyebrows, to show that he was being deliberately silly. 

“If that was your plan all along,” Pepper called from ahead of them in the hall, “I’m hitting you extra times. There are less stressful ways to to go about getting everyone together!”


End file.
